William Morris Hunt was a powerful presence in American art from about 1860 until his death in 1879. He challenged and transformed artistic tastes and the preferences of collectors in Boston, where he was based, as well as throughout the country. One of the first Americans to be influenced by the Barbizon School, he led artists to reject the literal landscapes of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Asher B. Durand, in favor of poetic and subjective modes of expression. He brought artists and patrons into extensive contact with European painting, and through his teaching and writing, he disseminated his ideas to a wide audience. Hunt's significance was strengthened also because of his close relationship to his brother Richard Morris, the most prominent American architect of the era. Richard Morris Hunt was the designer of choice for American millionaires. He built their mansions in Renaissance styles and dictated taste through the design of interiors. The Hunt brothers together maintained a controlling influence over aesthetic preferences that took hold in America in the late nineteenth century. Boston, in particular, had a deep admiration for William Morris Hunt's art, and his works were acquired by all collectors of significance in the city. In his time, Hunt personified the essential artist because of his thorough dedication to his craft and his love of communicating his passion for his art.

Hunt was a member of New England's social elite. His father was a congressman, and a friend of Daniel Webster's, and his mother came from an exclusive Boston family. Hunt was born in Brattleboro, Vermont in 1824, but spent his early childhood in Washington, D.C.

Hunt entered Harvard College in 1840, studying art under Crookshanks King; however, after receiving two suspensions for being "too fond of amusement", he went to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, continuing his education with the Rev. Dr. Samuel P. Parker. During 1844, Hunt travelled to England, Greece, and Turkey. He eventually settled in Rome, where he studied sculpture under Henry Kirke Brown. In the following year, Hunt entered the Düsseldorf Academy but found the curriculum dull and unchallenging. He returned to Paris in the fall of 1846 and then made a brief trip to America. By December he was back in Paris. Although he had intended to resume his studies in sculpture, after seeing Thomas Couture's The Falconer on display in a local art store, he apparently said: "If that is painting, I am a painter" and subsequently became Couture's pupil.

Hunt worked under Couture from 1846 until 1852. He was profoundly inspired by the master's painterly technique, which emphasized the generation of form, visible brushwork, and the importance of the rough sketch. Couture also advised his students to paint from memory rather than close, detailed analysis, another deviation from traditional academic precepts. Another formative influence at this time was Hunt's introduction to the work of the Barbizon painter, Jean-François Millet. Hunt was so impressed with Millet's The Sower, which he saw at the Salon of 1850, that in the following year he purchased an earlier version for his own collection. During 1852-1853, and again in 1855, Hunt painted with Millet at Barbizon. Influenced by Millet's direct, spontaneous approach to nature, Hunt soon developed an interest in plein air painting and rural subject matter.

Returning to Boston in 1855, Hunt began painting portraits in the contemporary French manner. In the following year he moved to Newport where his private art classes attracted such noted pupils as John La Farge. Hunt resettled in Boston in 1862. In addition to painting portraits, he began producing figure studies, emulating Couture's broad brushwork and using a dark, tonal palette. He also began to encourage local collectors, such as Martin Brimmer (the first President of the Museum of Fine Arts) to collect the work of Millet and other Barbizon painters.

In the spring of 1866, Hunt made another trip abroad, visiting Millet and J.B.C. Corot while in France. Returning to America early in 1868, he started to focus his attention on small-scale landscape studies in oil and charcoal. He also opened his studio to women, providing instruction in charcoal drawing. Hunt's theories about art, based on the notion that perception was more important than technique, were compiled by one of his students, Helen Knowlton, and published as W.M. Hunt's Talks on Art in 1875 and 1883.

In 1872, Hunt suffered a personal tragedy when most of his life's work, as well as his collection of French paintings, was lost in a fire that destroyed much of central Boston. Temporarily unable to work, Hunt made a brief trip to northeastern Florida, visiting Magnolia Springs and Saint Augustine. After returning to Boston, he began concentrating more intensively on landscape themes, working in Boston and its environs. Hunt continued in this direction, taking his aesthetic cue from both Couture and Millet, until 1878, when he received a commission to paint two murals for the State Capitol at Albany. The murals were completed and were a "decided critical success." His contemporaries viewed them as the culmination of his career, Hunt anticipated additional commissions at Albany, but funds for the decoration of the Capitol were vetoed by Governor Lucius Robinson. Hunt died, from drowning, in September of 1879 while vacationing on the Isles of Shoals in New Hampshire.

Inspired by both Couture and the precepts of the Barbizon School and guided by his own admonition that ". . . it is the impression of the thing you want," Hunt helped pave the way for the acceptance, in Boston, of a more poetic approach to painting at a time when artists in other centers, such as New York, were still practicing a descriptive form of realism.

Examples of Hunt's work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; the Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts; the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; Brooks Memorial Library, Brattleboro, Vermont; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; the Detroit Institute of Art; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the State Capitol, Albany; and many others.


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